as in, the unofficial world champion will usually play at the World Cup becuase of the qualifying system, although this doesn't always work out. When it does though, the world cup final will almost certainly be an unofficial championship match too.

It seems insane they haven't changed the OFC route to qualification yet beyond a playoff against CONCACAF's fourth-placed team rather than the AFC's. New Zealand will have undoubtedly the easiest route to WC qualification of any team.

There's just no real point in having the OFC since Australia left, and there wasn't even much point in having it before then.

Of course if they separated off some countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. into the OFC and shoved Australia back into it, then you'd make it a bit better and the AFC wouldn't be as massive and unwieldly, but I doubt anyone would actually care enough to do that.

Those countries are so small and disparate, and global warming is such a threat to them, that they cooperate a lot on many things and it's hard to see how they can have a voice without some kind of unified body to get behind. And if there's precedent for several teams within one country (as with the Home Nations, and also China/Hong Kong/Macau) then arguably a joint team between several other nations, all culturally and ethnically and historically linked by imperialism etc. etc., should be a valid argument too.

Although that said, that road leads towards an eventual EU team, which would be a terrifying prospect if only for how good it could theoretically always be.

Asian football's really not gaining any strength in depth in the same way as Africa, Europe, even to an extent North America. why? growth local football leagues are growing thanks to expensive foreign imports bought by oil money. traditional powerhouses like S.Korea, Japan, even Saudis had a strong league which despite having some foreign imports have a strong national core. places like UAE, Qatar, Bahrain really don't. Australia have done so well because they have a lot of players playing in stronger leagues, in a way that only Japan and S.Korea do within Asia

New Zealand have a weaker team, i can't see they'd progress too much. having more competitive fixtures would be a help though. and i do see the logic of combining OFC and AFC, not least because most qualifying is regionalised, which wouldn't *overly* penalise the likes of Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa etc

but the lack of strength in depth in Asian international football and the fact that it's being left behind is kind of baffling

Sure, they're a rugby country, and they've only got a population of 4 million, but they're still well below the quality of European teams with even smaller populations.

Asia's going to catch up quickly though, don't worry about that. As soon as China get the World Cup sometime in the 2030s they're going to spend an absolute shitload on developing young players, and that injection of money and quality will most likely drag up the surrounding countries.

Earns a nice bit on the side buying premium gig and sports tickets before they go on sale and then selling them on to professional scalpers.

He accidentally bought something like 20 tickets for the Sweden game instead of the Spain game, hasn't been able to shift them, and can't even get friends on Facebook to come with him for free. Nobody cares.

it's pretty crazy. Having just beaten Spain, reigning European and World Champions, albeit in a Friendly you would have thought people would have been throwing themselves at the chance of going to Wembley to watch England a few days later. Yet as you say, nobody cares. Enthusiasm for watching the national side seems to be increasingly on the wane.

Also, I hope Bosnia wins somehow in Lisbon, they really deserve to go to EURO 2012., even though they played poorly in the first match. In reality, Bosnia should have been at the top of their group, but some referee in Paris awarded France a non-existing penalty and they were first.

is that Carson plays and by some miracle manages to have a decent 90 minutes, thus making people think "well, he's taken his chance" and he establishes himself as the main backup keeper. I cannot believe he is considered to be in the top three English goalkeepers. There is just no way this can be the case in reality. The guy is absolutely useless at competitive international level due to his lack of composure.

On the contrary the best thing that could happen is he starts and has an absolute nightmare and is never picked again.

... he's quality - I said he'd play for England when we had him on loan at Stockport. Hopefully another of our ex players Anthony Pilkington might get a chance at some point as well if he carries on like he's started. He's comfortably better than shite like Walcott.

I'd get the mafia to kidnap Paul Robinson's wife and kids and not give them back until he agrees to benchwarm. Ben Foster should grow up and come out of his "retirement" too. What a dick. Them and Hart would be a decent 1-13-23 in an any international squad.

But yeah with those two out of the reckoning I reckon at least give someone like John Ruddy a shot in the squad to see if he trains well even if you don't play him. Anyone who has ever seen Carson play will see that he is basically no different to Richard Wright - a decent enough young prospect once upon a time who gained a big reputation after a big money transfer, had his chance on the big stage and monumentally blew it, but somehow maintained the reputation for a while. I actually can't believe Capello and co still rate him enough to think that he could actually hack playing a major European Championship game. The guy doesn't even have the nerve for a major Npower Championship game.

Parker, Gerrard and Wilshere are absolutely nailed on if fit, Barry and Lampard seem very likely and not sure he'll take more than 5 given that Milner and Jones could fill in if needed.

I guess it's worth having a look at youngsters like Rodwell and, if they're playing, maybe McEachran and Barker for the future, but probably the first choices should probably start together as much as possible now.

with a game to spare. Pretty good work seeing when I joined five seasons (seasons are in ten week cycles) ago it was looking like the team would get relegated to the bottom league that season.

We stayed up in the last game, won promotion to league B the next season, and are now on the brink of promotion to league A. However, not sure I'll be celebrating for too long if we manage to win - the team that won our league last season is currently bottom of league A with one win from eight and a goal difference of -36.

Jokes about his giant arse aside, he's obviously a good footballer, but that role for England seems entirely different to the one he plays at City. It's all about shielding the defence, breaking up play and basically running your arse off so that the 2 more attacking midfielders have more license to get forward. Being slow and not that good at tackling suggests maybe Barry isn't best suited to the job.

Now I agree that Parker is pretty one dimensional and hugely overrated by some, but the things he is good at make him pretty perfect for that position.

Of course hopefully you can get Hargreaves fit and then Parker and Barry can both fuck off and everyone will be happy.

He had by far the best pass completion of any England player against Spain, and was the only England player in the top ten for the match, for example.

Otherwise, I broadly agree with you. Parker strikes me as being merely a better Karl Henry, one of those players who gets noticed for making 'brave' challenges and commended for it when the real skill is in playing the game in such a way as to make sure you don't have to resort to such bravery.

Similar to the idea that, if a goalie has to make a spectacular save, then it means a defender somewhere has screwed up.

He was one of our best players last season, he does a job nobody else in our team can, he's got years on Barry and Yaya who are already like watching continents move, and you've got him on the train to Bayern? Silly talk.

Because you have players who can maintain possession and someone like Kompany at the back, your defence doesn't need babysitting so you can have a ballplayer like Barry with a bit of physical presence and tactical discipline, hence De Jong's benching.

England should be able to get away with that against a most teams because the players are just better en masse than their opponents, but against quality sides who are likely to have more of the ball you need a proper, mobile defensive midfielder otherwise your attacking players get drawn back to help out and you don't have any options when you do go forward. Barry simply can't do that job.

and Sutton Utd at home to Notts County is one of them. Hooray! Not only for the Extra £72,000 for the TV rights, plus additional extras, but I'm at a wedding on the Saturday and would have missed it. Instead, it's a lovely 5pm Sunday evening kick-off at GGL.

but I thought Terry had an exceptional game tonight. His positioning was fantastic, and snuffed out many attacks with interceptions that he mad look simple. His distribution from the back was excellent too, playing triangles to release the full-backs on both sides and working well with Phil Jones and Cahill. I thought he was past it, but he actually looked rejuvenated with some of the 'youngsters' around him.

It was a night when the young players shone. England played a 4-3-3 formation, with Jack Rodwell, Phil Jones and Gareth Barry in midfield. Going into the World Cup in South Africa last year I think you could probably name all but maybe two of the 23-man squad but now there are a whole host of players to choose from. The manager gets paid a lot of money so he can make those decisions.